gland January, 1619, and reached
Virginia on the 29th of April. After some weeks of preparation, he
issued a general proclamation setting in operation the Company's orders.
It was decreed, "that all those who were resident here before the
departure of Sir Thomas Dale should be freed and acquitted from such
publique services and labors which formerly they suffered, and that
those cruel laws by which we had so long been governed were now
abrogated, and that now we were to be governed by those free laws which
his Majesty's subjects live under in Englande.... And that they might
have a hand in the governing of themselves, it was granted that a
General Assembly should be held yearly once, whereat were to be present
the Governor and Counsell, with two Burgesses from each plantation
freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof; this Assembly to have
power to make and ordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should by them be
thought good and proffittable for our subsistence."[141]

The exact date of the election for Burgesses is not known.[142] The
statement that the representatives were to be "chosen by the
inhabitants" seems to indicate that the franchise was at once given to
all male adults, or at least to all freemen. "All principall officers in
Virginia were to be chosen by ye balloting box." From the very first
there were parties, and it is possible that the factions of the London
Company were reflected at the polls in the early elections. The Magna
Charta made provision for the establishment of boroughs, which were to
serve both as units for local government and as electoral districts. No
attempt was made to secure absolute uniformity of population in the
boroughs, but there were no glaring inequalities. With the regard for
the practical which has always been characteristic of Englishmen, the
Company seized upon the existing units, such as towns, plantations and
hundreds, as the basis of their boroughs. In some cases several of these
units were merged to form one borough, in others, a plantation or a town
or a hundred as it stood constituted a borough. As there were eleven of
these districts and as each district chose two Burgesses, the first
General Assembly was to contain twenty-two representatives.[143]

The Assembly convened at Jamestown, August 9th, 1619. "The most
convenient place we could finde to sitt in," says the minutes, "was the
Quire of the Churche Where Sir George Yeardley, the Governor, being sett
down in